Getting Here

The market sets up in theRieke Elementary parking lot in Portland, Oregon. Parking is available at both entrances. Fom Capital Highway: enter at Sunset Blvd and turn left into the lot along the Wilson High School track bleachers. From Vermont St: parking is allowed along the north side of Vermont as well as the south end of the Rieke Elementary parking lot.

What's Coming to Market?

Peaches will be plentiful this week as will nectarines. Plums will be available too. As for apples, William's Pride and Gravenstein were available last week. Expect more this week. Blackberries, strawberries and blueberries will be plentiful. Cherries will be available but limited.

Visit our Availability Page for more information and the full list of farmers and vendors expected this weekend. The page will be updated through Saturday evening. Check our Twitter feed for Sunday morning updates.

Vendor Profile: Boondockers Farm

Farmers’ markets are a collection of businesses, a temporal grocery store where each shelf comes with a smiling face and a wealth of knowledge about the products they produce and sell. We’re giving our vendors the spotlight to share more about their role in the Hillsdale market community. By Sarah West

Chickens and turkeys roam freely around the farmWhen market manager Eamon Molloy and I visited Boondockers Farm last Saturday, we got a glimpse of life on a diversified small farm: ducks, chickens and turkeys of all ages roaming freely; a litter of four-day-old piglets sleeping in a pile next to their sizeable mother; rows of highbush blueberries ripening their fruit in the late-afternoon sun; golden fields of freshly cut hay; and a cow laying down sick.

Intern Sean tries to keep Tiara, the sick cow, from lying down while Boondocker’s other Jersey cow won’t leave her sideJust when a farm relaxes into some vision of a pastoral ideal, the immediacy of real life buts in. So, while farmer-entrepreneur Rachel Kornstein—who owns Boondockers Farm with her partner, Evan Gregoire—assisted her troubled cow and tried to reach a veterinarian, we got a tour from Kara, one of the farm’s current interns. Kara grew up on a family homestead in Boring, Oregon, and is familiar with farm living. Each animal she brings us to see she introduces with a description of how cuddly it is. Of Tiara, the sick cow, she told us: “ She is a cow that hugs. I lay against her belly and she reaches her head around and presses against me and holds it there—hugging me!” The sow, Maple, also cuddles, as do the farm’s thousands of ducks and its nine Great Pyrenees guard dogs. The only farm animal not open to human contact was a surly male turkey that had to be warded off with a stick. But he was softening, Kara assured us, because he had recently let her pet him.

An afternoon nap for Maple and her litter.Boondockers Farm is located about 20 miles east of Portland outside the hamlet of Beavercreek. With a total of 75 acres, the property is mostly pasture with bordering woodland that harbors three ponds and brambles of wild blackberries. To the east, the terrain undulates with coniferous forests as the landscape transitions from valley to foothills, lending the farm a frontier-like ambience—a place where the domesticated and the wild intermingle.

The scope of animal life on the farm is striking. The primary mission of Boondockers Farm is to preserve heritage poultry breeds, namely Ancona and Saxony ducks. Their Ancona breeding pairs come from Dave Holderread, a celebrated waterfowl breeder based in Corvallis. Anconas are a desirable breed for their foraging skills—eating slugs and other insect pests as well as grasses and seedheads—and prolific egg production. Anconas lay up to 280 eggs per year and provide a source of nutritious, full-flavored meat. Boondockers also breeds Ancona chicks to sell, accepting preorders online and at markets when a hatch is approaching.

Anconas in pastureThe ducks are rotated through large pastures, allowing them optimum foraging opportunities while employing their help to keep slugs and weeds at bay and enrich the soil with their manure. The farm’s other creatures—cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys—have supplemental roles on the farm: creating diversity in pasture rotations while providing the farmers with milk, meat, eggs and, of course, lots of cuddles. A Pyrenees guard dog or two lovingly protects the flocks in each of their various pens to keep them safe from raccoons, cougars, snakes and other wildlife.

Boondockers’ old-growth highbush blueberry patchLike most small farms, one focus isn’t enough to make a financially sustainable enterprise. Boondockers also grows heirlooms vegetables for seed, namely a plethora of tomato varieties, which they sell online and at farmers markets. They manage a small orchard of old-growth blueberries, which they sell fresh and as preserves throughout the off-season. Their property has two houses, one of which they are renovating for future farm-stays.

Rachel and Evan, along with their three capable interns, have accomplished a great deal in the two years since they relocated their farm from the Eugene area where they raised Anconas and farmed vegetables for four years. Boondockers exemplifies the creativity, tenacity and hard work that small-scale farming demands to succeed.